PR Newswire

Strata Advances Use of StrataWeb Technology for Damaged Roads

PR Newswire

MUMBAI, August 8, 2017

MUMBAI, August 8, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Every year, natural disasters disrupt daily life and connectivity of places, which affect people severely and the Government is required to take emergency measures to tackle with such situations. In March 2016, torrential rain over several days completely destroyed a stretch of the National Highway 44 (NH-44) on the Assam side of the Assam-Tripura border.

National Highway 44 is the main throughway for commercial vitals to the State of Tripura, in the North East corner of India. The wash-out resulted in prices of essential commodities including fuel and food to sky-rocket beyond imagination. With the bottleneck of stranded vehicles and blockage of all goods, the situation turned chaotic; Tripura was virtually isolated from the rest of the country and the anxiety escalated to the Central Government.

In view of Strata's known expertise in geosynthetics and pavements, the Assam Public Works (Building and National Highway) Department appointed Strata for an innovative and immediate solution.

The subgrade of the highway is highly plastic, weak clayey soil. The affected stretch traverses forested and undulating terrain where drainage was an issue and a subgrade of low permeability certainly did not help matters. Few conventional methods were attempted but were unsuccessful in allowing free flow of vehicles across this stretch. The two major challenges were drainage of the pavement section and its sub-grade, and strengthening the pavement section. Keeping these in mind, Strata proposed StrataWeb® within the pavement section.

Remnants of the old, damaged road were scrapped off. The subgrade was dressed, levelled and compacted. A nonwoven was placed above the compacted surface to prevent intermingling of the engineered section with the weak plastic subgrade.

Within fifteen days of commencing the work, the highway opened to traffic for all classes of vehicles even after the granular base was laid. The bituminous concrete and the dense bituminous macadam layers were placed later.

The road constructed with StrataWeb® in 2016 has survived the heavy rainfall of more than 121 mm (~ 5 inches) per day this year. This proves the robust quality and the low maintenance of the roads built with StrataWeb[®].

It has been candidly acknowledged by the Assam PW (Buildings and NH) Department in one of their conference publications on 'Modern Technology and Materials' that, 'The NH-44 at Churaibari which once became infamous for mud and slush is now transforming into heaven of beauty. All this has been made possible by the use of Geocell in Road construction'.

Strata Geosystems is a market leader in the geosynthetic segment for soil reinforcement solutions around the world. It was established in 2004, in partnership with Strata Systems Inc., USA - a two decade veteran in geosynthetics.

Our manufacturing plants are ISO certified and our products have the CE mark. In addition, all testing is conducted in GAI-LAP accredited labs across the U.S., U.K., and India. We are also a proud member of the International Geotechnical Society (IGS) promoting advancements in geosynthetics.